- Californians may have voted down the much-needed stoner initiative, er, Proposition 19, but they weren’t the only state where voters were faced with a pot-centric ballot measure on Election Day. Although Arizona voters weren’t being asked to approve the overall legalization of the hippie lettuce, they did vote on a measure that would legalize medical marijuana. But the vote was so close that it took until today for state election officials to decide the result and at long last, deliver the long-awaited good news to all of Arizona stoners that medical marijuana is now legal in their state. By a narrow margin of about 4,300 votes, Arizona voters approved Proposition 203. The final results have 50.1 percent of the vote to 49.8 percent of "no" votes, according to unofficial results posted on the Arizona Secretary of State's website. More than 1.6 million votes were cast on the measure, which was the only issue on the ballot for which a definitive result had not yet been announced after the November 2 election. Within hours of the results going up online, the stoner activists at the Marijuana Policy Project saluted the result in a statement, saying it will allow patients who suffer from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses to use medical marijuana with a recommendation from their doctor. "Voters in Arizona have sided with science and compassion while dealing yet another blow to our nation's cruel and irrational prohibition on marijuana," said Rob Kampia, Marijuana Policy Project executive director, in the statement. "Arizona's law now reflects the mainstream public opinion that seriously ill people should not be treated like criminals if marijuana can provide them relief, and that doctors should be able to recommend marijuana to patients if they believe it can help alleviate their suffering." Those comments may be true as they relate to those suffering from terminal illness, but don’t think for a second that potheads all around Arizona aren’t working on their scam/plan to con a doctor into giving them some hippie lettuce for their chronic pain that looks a lot like stoner-itis. Having spent a few days in Amsterdam, I encountered a guy from Montana, where medical marijuana is legal, who manages to score a regular supply of ganja from a friend who is in the medical professional. In other words, Arizona potheads, the Marijuana Policy Project have provided funding and support to the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project, the group that ran the Proposition 203 campaign, with the intent of helping ease the pain of those suffering from serious illnesses, but everyone knows that this is just opening one more door for you in your quest to get baked on a daily basis. Arizona joins 14 other states and the District of Columbia that have passed medical marijuana laws since 1996 and in every single one of these places, stoners have been huge beneficiaries of the new laws………
- The Dallas Cowboys may be terrible and the single-biggest train wreck in the NFL right now, but according to owner/general manager Jerry Jones, their head coaching job is just as sought-after as ever. After firing the inept, bumbling Wade Phillips this week, Jones said Super Bowl-winning coaches have contacted him about becoming his next head coach. Jones, who named offensive coordinator Jason Garrett as the team’s interim coach for the remainder of the season and said that he hopes Garrett will earn the job on a permanent basis. "I will say that before I made the decision with Wade Phillips, I had Super Bowl-winning coaches solicit this job," Jones said during a radio interview. When the interviewer pressed him as to which Super Bowl-winning coaches had called, Jones refused to elaborate, nor would he say whether he intended to pursue any of the available coaches with Super Bowl rings -- a group that includes Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick and Tony Dungy. Dungy said in a separate radio appearance that he had no interest in the job. "[Jones] needs a Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden or Mike Holmgren. Those are the kind of guys he needs. All three of those guys would be pretty good right now." If Jones it to be believed, Garrett will have a legitimate chance to earn the job over the final eight games of the season and won't necessarily be judged by how many wins the Cowboys have the remainder of the season. "It's a huge challenge for our team and, of course, a huge challenge for Jason," Jones said. "If he can meet this challenge square on and he can pull his nose up, if he can do things that you see that direction, then that's going to be impressive. Very few people have ever come into a coaching situation with any more challenges. We all know his qualities. He's from a great football background. He's got a great background with the Cowboys. I know what he's capable of, his demeanor, how he carries himself, how he approaches. I know all of those things. There's no stranger here for me in Jason Garrett. How the team responds, what we can do on a player-by-player basis, all of those things will weigh into it. I do not have a won-loss percentage in mind or a number of wins that impact what I do in the future." It’s the first head coaching job for the Princeton-educated Garrett, who caused plenty of waves when Jones hired him prior to hiring Phillips and gave him the highest salary of any NFL assistant. Considering the team he’s going to be working with, he’s going to have to earn that money over the next two months…….
- Fending off much-hyped newcomers at the box office is a tough challenge, even for the strongest of films, so Will Ferrell’s Megamind maintaining the top spot in the earnings race in its second weekend is noteworthy. The Pixar animated flick made $30.1 million, dropping off 35 percent from its opening frame but still managing to raise its overall gross to $89.8 million. That was enough to hold off newcomer Unstoppable, which proved unable to live up to its name or ride the star power of Denzel Washington to the top of the earnings list. Unstoppable made $23.5 million in its opening weekend, giving it the second spot by a wide margin over last weekend’s No. 2 film, Due Date. The laugher starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis saw a massive drop-off from its opening stanza and made a meager $15.5 million to place third for the frame. Fourth place went to the horror thriller Skyline, which certainly received plenty of fanfare but fell flat in its opening weekend despite opening wide in 2,880 theaters. Its $11.7 million tally looks better only when you consider the $10 million budget it was made upon. The last spot in the top five was held down by another newcomer, Morning Glory, which looks to be on track to be one of the biggest busts of the year after just one week. But that’ll happen when you spend $40 million to make a movie, have it open in 3,822 theaters and make just $9.6 million for the weekend. The rest of the top 10 was filled out by: last weekend’s No. 3 film, For Colored Girls (No. 6 this weekend with $6.8 million and a cumulative total of $30.9 million), geezer spy movie Red (No. 7 with $5.1 to elevate its total tally to $79.8 million and counting), Paranormal Activity (No. 8 with $3.1 million and despite a hefty 57-percent decline, an overall tally of $82 million on a budget of just $3 million), fellow horror film Saw 3-D (No. 9 with $2.8 million, - a whopping 64.4-percent decline - and a cumulative total of $43.5 million) and Jackass 3-D (No. 10 with $2.3 million to raise its impressive running tally to $114.7 million-plus). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were Secretariat and The Social Network………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the globe is traveling to Bangladesh today, where two straight days of clashes between police and opposition supporters in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, are forcing the world to take notice. Two straight days of riots, brawls and melees have produced scores of memorable images, including The Man going to his old standbys of tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting dissidents are tried and true measures for oppressive regimes looking to quell uprisings, but when dissidents are outraged over real or perceived injustices, rubber bullets and tear gas aren’t going to stop them for long. The BNP is doing its best to incite the uprising, calling for a day-long general strike in protest against the eviction on Saturday of its leader, Khaleda Zia, from her home of more than 25 years. The government claimed that the lease on the house was not legal, which seems extremely convenient under the circumstances. But who am I to condemn their actions when those actions led to massive brawls between BNP supporters and police after the supporters gathered near the party's headquarters and shouted slogans in support of Zia. Schools, businesses and most offices were shut by the strike and public transportation was severely disrupted across the country. The protests were timed well, as thousands of people were hoping to go to home for the forthcoming Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha but were unable to leave Dhaka because of the protests. On Saturday, vehicles around the city were set ablaze by rioters and those images warmed the hearts of riot lovers around the world. Seeing Zia evicted from her home struck such a chord with BNP supports because the residence was leased to Zia after the assassination of her husband, the former president, Gen Zia-ur-Rahman, in a military coup in 1981. Her supporters firmly believe that the eviction was politically motivated, which doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch under the circumstances. So use that anger and riot to your heart’s content, BNP dissidents, riot on……..
- For a generation where nearly everyone claims to be ADD or ADHD and unable to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time, it can't be good news when a study finds that having a wandering mind leads to emotional unhappiness in humans. According to some of Harvard’s many wicked smaht people, researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, 47 percent of people's waking hours are spent thinking about things that have nothing to do with their current activity and according to their findings, that’s a decidedly bad thing. "It is likely the same capacity that allows humans to learn from the past, plan for the future, and imagine things that might never occur, which are clearly afford very important benefits," Killingsworth said. "But like people's desire for food, it may be a tendency that at some level is beneficial but can cause problems (e.g. obesity with respect to desire for food, and unnecessary worry or distraction with respect to mind-wandering)." The study was unique in that participants took part through an iPhone app available to anyone at trackyourhappiness.org. More than 2,200 people, ranging in age from 18 to 88, took part in the study, which was published in the journal Science. Researchers contacted them at random interviews and asked questions about their present happiness, their current activity, and what they were thinking about. Over the course of the study, participants reported engaging in 22 different activities, including watching TV and shopping, making love had the least mind-wandering associated with it - stunning, I know. Mind wandering occurred in nearly one-third of all other activities, according to the study. Relating their results of mind-wandering to overall happiness, researches found that having sex, exercising, engaging in conversation bring the most happiness, while the least happiness comes while resting, working, using a home computer. Yet a surprisingly small percentage of happiness - 4.6 percent - has to do with the actual activity you're doing, while mind-wandering claims 10.8 percent. Killingsworth encourages anyone with an iPhone to do their own research using trackyourhappiness.org. "Users can view their results and see the predictors of their happiness. More generally we hope our insights from the project can help improve people's well-being," he said. We can, assuming we’re not too ADHD to focus long enough for that……..
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